What Not To Do??
Some revision with an instructor the other day, having not flown for months.
I knew he wanted to do some stalls and suchlike, so I went up to a nice safe height.
Then he pulled the throttle.
Fair enough, I knew we were going to do some PFLs as well, I'd actually asked for some after all! I remarked that this was the first time that my main problem on a PFL was actually finding a suitable gap through which to glide down through the clouds ... to which the reply was along the lines of "your problem mate, it was your decision to come up here in the first place". (The forecast, and METAR, "few" was a tad on the optimistic side.)
So ... a hint:
(1) If you know you're going up with an instructor to do PFLs you might find it easier if you remain below even a "few" cloud layer.
But ... on the other hand (as we discussed) I'd have been up there, above those clouds, perfectly legal VMC, if I'd been on a cross country trip somewhere on my own, and there's no law of nature that says that engines only fail when you've gone up to do PFLs.
So ... perhaps the hint really is:
(2) When you're above a "few" layer do keep planning which gap you're going through into which field.
Which of course I should have known already.
And possibly one for instructors:
(3) Get them above a "few" clouds before pulling the throttle once in a while, otherwise the first time they encouter this issue might be for real.